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Dick Carelli, 202-502-2600
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November 8, 2007 — Free public access to federal court records is available at 16 libraries in 14 states under a joint pilot project of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the Government Printing Office.

The project offers free access, at the participating 16 federal depository libraries, to the federal judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. PACER allows users to obtain case file documents, listings of all case parties, judgments, and other information from district, bankruptcy and appellate courts online, with the data immediately available for printing or downloading.

PACER normally carries an eight-cents-per-page fee which is used to fund the system's costs. That fee will be waived for all users, even those who already have PACER accounts, when the system is accessed from the 16 libraries.

Each of the libraries has agreed to promote the PACER service, provide users with a three-question PACER survey, report PACER activities to the GPO every two months, and provide access only from computers within the library and its branches. The libraries also have agreed to maintain login and password security.

The project, which will last up to two years, is part of the judiciary's continuing effort to expand public access to court records by discovering if a segment of the public desires access to information contained in the PACER system but is unlikely to go to a courthouse or become a PACER user.

The federal depository libraries participating in the pilot are:

More information about PACER is available at www.pacer.uscourts.gov.